Oh come all ye frugalers, joyful in December, oh come ye, oh come yea and chat

[babsmam]

New Fred, hope I've done it right I've never done one before.

I just spent £10.80 online at Mothercare and bought DSs stocking prezzies. 4 little things and I know he will love each one. We got his "main" present sorted months ago. Yay! Mission accomplished for just over £10. And 5% cashback too.

Em that looks great. I'll have to go and pay my tester pot tax and find out what it looks like here.

Well done Collie

I've been making flapjacks here and I've discovered that boiling butter and sugar in a stainless steel pot makes it really clean and shiny. I wonder what the brown stains on the steel were? Because they're in my flapjacks now.

could go a flapjack now...

Flavour ipsos, they were spots of flavour.

LOL! What That must be what it is. Good point. I always think about cooking in terms of calories and nutritional content and whether it's been heated enough to be safe to eat. It never occurs to me about flavour coming from mysterious places like the walls of the pot.

Em Should I put some in the post? Sounds like you need them.

Warning: Christmas name change alert!

[santa]

Mmmm flapjacks with extra flavour! I just had a really glum moment when I realised my hair is so brittle it'll need to be cut off into a pixie crop. And then I thought "ah well, it'll grow back" and randomly started singing Christmas music to myself.

Thyroid issues suck. I want gorgeous glosdy hair. Not brittle hair that snaps off 6 inches at a time.

Just given up on studying. And made a tuna melt toasted wrap. Best thing to happen to me for a while!!

Trying to pick up where I left off about 3 months ago!

Have nailed my christmas shopping - save for this monthly so hasn't been too painful but now want to clear my £600 overdraft. Need to sort out more stuff for ebay/facebook selling page and generally avoid the shops.

Did pick up free £8 pack of xmas cards, chocolate coins and star wars lollies from WHSmith with my o2 priority moments codes and got a brand new Joules snowsuit for £10 from a charity shop on Edgware Road yesterday so perhaps shopping is not all bad!

Also need to get organised and minimise eating out. I normally buy the kids dinner at the swimming pool cafe after school on a Thursday but have made them a pack lunch each as have stuff in.

Anyone got any good ideas for slow cooker meals that don't require any pre-cooking?!

Good name collie. Sorry to hear about the hair.

The sandwich sounds nice Em.

I'm feeling really quite relaxed today after all these magnesium supplements. Quite chuffed about that.

I've never used priority moments, how would I know which are the cards that are free? I can't see anything in the app, are they marked?

I just got notification of the dates when tesco Christmas deliveries open up in the Republic of Ireland. Thought I'd post in case it's useful.

umiaisha vegetarian mince spag bol, veggie mince chilli, beef stew, beef stroganoff, veggie sausage casserole, beef or vegetable curry. You can get "cook from frozen" chicken and do chicken casserole or chicken curry.

So hungry after that list :) I'm sure others have other suggestions too.

P.S we serve tortilla chips with chilli instead of cooking rice. Chunky bread with stew or casserole. And just a naan with curry. I rarely cook rice I'm such a lazy bugger. Got fed up of scraping uneaten rice into the bin. But the microwave rice can save time.

Nice name collie. I need a Christmas name but I'm rubbish at these things.
Spent a fortune today but Christmas is done except for odds and ends.

Sorry, I didn't mean to cause issues re F&B. I too love the colours, but, chemically, it is simply no 'better' than Dulux or Crown. Arguably, they are just better at marketing

umiaisha You don't to pre cook anything to put it in the SC. You might feel you 'need' to, or that it tastes better for it, but it will be fine without too.

I managed to spend £30 at Aldi, when I only popped in for a few bits. It's ages since I did that, so I am annoyed.

Weirdly anxious and stressy today. This is not me so I need a big bloody boot up the backside tbh.

I will bake, that will calm me down. I did buy maple syrup, so will make syrup sponge.

That's okay need. I have a ludicrously strong sense of smell, which makes a difference paint-wise, but possibly there is no difference apparent to others.

Good idea to bake if you're feeling highly strung. It's probably us freaking you out with all our frank admissions of our worries. :-) Maybe you need to have a long hearty romp in some fields with big dogs.

I had a nice bit of gardening today. There was a first hard frost a few days ago so I have tidied away my runner beans and folded down some huge climbing nasturtiums so that the seeds will fall on the ground and cause the same riot of colour next year.

My refurbishment project has stopped for a few days so nobody has said "That will be £1800 pounds including materials." to me today, which is very refreshing.

Perhaps we should have a parallel thread for the frugalleers in which we all shamelessly list our good points and the things that we are not anxious about, just to encourage ourselves along. :-) No idea how we would do that with any dignity though. :-)

My loop monitor just said this to me:

"It's been 10 hours since you were last here, in that time you've spent £3.15 on energy. "

Oh joy...

It's all this handwashing dishes. It's clearly destroying the planet. I should just stop doing it.

Golly, too much to catch up on. It's a bit overwhelming when you haven't been on for a few days!

Anyway, yesterday was an NSD (I had my first day of supply in over a month), and today was £10 deposit for a Christmas lunch (on the 11th) in a nice foodie pub not far from me, and £1.42 on milk and biscuits. Also managed a trip to the library for the first time in a while.

Happy 3rd birthday to Spotty's DS too!

You can ignore all my posts Creme. I was just wittering.

That's a bit scary ipsos, it's so easy to use energy without thinking, for us anyway!
Like the Xmas name Collie, I'm going to try and think of one.